Caramel Popcorn (no corn syrup!)

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For years and years and years (give or take a year or two), I’ve been wanting to find a good Caramel Popcorn recipe that did not contain corn syrup. The recipes I found that didn’t contain corn syrup were either complicated, or they contained other ingredients beyond corn syrup that I didn’t feel comfortable feeding my family.

But just leave it to you all to solve my Caramel Popcorn dilemma. A big thanks goes out to everyone who suggested that this new Caramel Sauce recipe might be able to be used on popcorn. Over the weekend, I decided to give it a try. I figured the outcome may not be blog-worthy, but surely my family would eat it regardless of whether it was great or not. My men are always so good to eat my experiments. Especially if it’s an experiment with Caramel Sauce on top.

This got rave reviews, which came, as you can imagine, while they were chewing. Since they were saying such nice things to me about my cooking, I lovingly allowed them to talk with their mouths full. Far be it from me to scold my popcorn munching children when they are in the middle of boosting my ego.

Comments

Well Laura, you have outdone yourself this time! I am a chocoholic and could usually care less for any dessert that doesn’t involve chocolate. BUT, I made your caramel sauce a few minutes ago and drizzled it over vanilla ice cream…no chocolate anywhere…and it was AMAZING!!! I can’t wait to try this recipe out as well. I do like popcorn…a lot. This will send it over the top :) Thanks for your experiments!! LOL

Theresa, Well, here’s what we do when we make caramel popcorn and are craving chocolate. We throw some chocolate chips in the mix (you would do that after baking if you follow Laura’s recipe). Toss it around a bit to distribute and YUM. Kids love it and so do I. Enjoy!

Can’t wait to try it! I usually mix mine in a paper bag! Don’t know exactly how sanitary it is, but around this season I pick up a couple of extra unused ones at the store. Pour your popcorn in, pour on the caramel, fold the top and shake! Super easy clean up too!

This recipe looks wonderful! I just wanted to comment that I use a recipe from the tightwad gazette for caramel corn that calls for corn syrup, but I use honey instead of corn syrup, and it tastes so much better than the corn syrup version. Honey and butter are amazing together!

Also, I have a question, your recipe calls for unpopped popcorn, but all your pictures show popped popcorn. Do you actually put the unpopped popcorn into the oven? And if so can you take pictures of it?

HI Laura, I’ve been visiting your site for a while ( and really enjoy your humor!)but never commented before. This time I just had to because I make caramel corn every Christmas and just use honey in place of corn syrup and rhapdura in place of brown sugar and you can’t tell the difference at all.

I was planning on some caramel corn later this month. I may just have to try this. A tip I have is to use a large roasting pan for baking the caramel corn. I put the lid on mine to keep it from scortching.

I made this last night and my family LOVED it! My only problem was the popcorn is now chewy not crunchy like store bought carmel corn. This is my first time making it so is this normal or did I do something wrong? GREAT flavor just too chewy. Any suggestions?

I had the same exact problem. I just kept putting back in the oven for 10 min increments and then stirred. I did notice if you left it out for a little bit (5 or so min) it did crispy up some! This did work for me. It did take about 30 or so min…

One little modification from my mother’s recipe: add 1/2 teaspoon baking soda after boiling the caramel sauce. It makes the sauce foam which makes it easier to spready evenly. Otherwise, I love the alternative to corn syrup. Made this tonight for the kids to take for Christmas parties at school tomorrow – quick and easy. Oh, and I put the poppsed popcorn in an 8 quart bowl and pour the caramel over, then mix and spread into pans. It is another bowl to clean, but I don’t get popcorn all over the place.

Thank you for this!!!! I ran out of heavy cream and instead used vanilla coffee creamer with less vanilla extract than the recipe called for (I eyeballed) and it was still YUMMY!!!! I am never ordering caramel popcorn from other websites again!

Not sure it would work but when we were kids we put it all in paper bags and shook it to spread it around, then we cooked it and shook it some more and then cooked it some more and then shook it some more.

Thanks Laura :) I sorta suspected, but wanted to make sure.
I always preferred making my popcorn on the stovetop, I seem to manage
burning microwave ones more often than not. And now they had microwave-caramel
in the store and I figured I’d have to go have a look how to make it myself.
Thanks for the recipe too :)

We just made this and ended up with a soupy mess. The sauce deflated most of the pop corn (we used an air popper). I’m wondering if the cream wasn’t heavy enough (we just skimmed it off of some raw milk), or if we needed to boil the sauce harder. I may try it again later as I love the “easiness” of the recipe, but at a later date. Thanks for sharing!

When I made it, the sauce was thick and sticky before I poured it on the popcorn. If your sauce wasn’t quite ready or too thin, then I guess it’d been a mess. It worked fine for me back when I made it. I guess the idea is to coat the popcorn in sticky caramel and then dry it up (the baking) so that the caramel will harden and not be sticky anymore. Good luck next time!

I made this today for the 2nd time. So delish. I used coconut sugar instead of regular brown sugar it is turns out amazing, can’t do it in the oven quite as long as the coconut sugar gives a really dark flavour so I just did it for 10 minutes instead. LOVE this and will make it often for sure.

Hi there! This recipe looks really good; I’m going to give it a whirl for New Year’s party this year! I do have a question for you and your readers though. I’ve been going over recipes and much disappointing experimentation for the kind of sweet and salty kettle corn they sell in bags at the store (ie Costco). I’ve been sticking to microwave recipes unfortunately, because our stove is glass top and I think it would scratch with shaking a pot around on it. I’ve tried grinding the sugar down to baker’s sugar even as per some instructions, and it keeps coming out all burnt. All the recipes are some formulation of mixing the popping corn kernels with a type of oil with sugar and some salt and then popping. Any ideas? Thanks in advance ………

My thought is that since it is done in the microwave the heat is too high. Microwaves put out a LOT of heat and that could cause it to burn. I would suggest turning it down to a low heat setting if your microwave has that option.

Made this tonight, exactly as the recipe states — and it was incredible! I’ve been searching for a corn syrup-free recipe for some time, and this one is amazing. I allowed the popcorn to cool on parchment paper once out of the oven as I wasn’t ready to eat it right away, and it came out crunchy and delicious. A true hit! Thank you!